Rating: 
Summary: This is a wedding you wont want to miss.
Review: The hardest thing about writing a story is giving it enough real depth without losing focus on the story. Monsoon Wedding is just that. After a long period of arrid and dust filled months it finally rains and cleans the air. The Monsoon is a deluge...just like this film. It is a deluge of stories. Each character has one...it's exactly like life.
Most movies lose the ability to portray the lives of all the characters involved, but Mira Nair does not back away from the challenge of bringing all the stories together. Some might think that this is a stereo-typical view of the lives of Indians. If you have ever been to India, you will know that this is not a stretch from reality. Social castes, social appearances, dark secrets, slick business practices, traditional ceremonies between the women, rebellion against arranged marriages, desires to find a love of your own, desires to know what it is like to be on the other side of the social coin, sexuality and acceptance....all of this is Monsoon Wedding. A real masala. This movie has heroes, villains, deep characters dressed in shallow images, shallow characters dressed in deep images. All reveal themselves in the course of this film.
Nair does her best to keep this from being a full blown Bollywoord flick and holds back until the scenes of the day before and the day of the wedding when song and dance breaks out like an Indian Rogers & Hamerstain musical. That is Indian cinema...and in case some didn't know it, although a resident of Canada, Mira Nair is Indian.
It's a great film and has a wonderful soundtrack. If you are expecting Deepa Mehta-esque type story telling...this is Mira Nair. Nair is a real genius for telling and filming a story. She is resourceful and incredibly open. By the time you see this review, it will be out of general cirulation in theatre..so go to Blockbuster and rent the DVD.
Rating: 
Summary: A Fabulous Romantic Surprise!... A MUST SEE!
Review: This is an excellent, feel-good movie. It's got it's flaws...but it's certainly one of my favorite movies of all time! It's full of energy and fantastic characters. Nair approaches several topics that are rarely approached in most contemporary movies coming out of India...but she does so with both wit and a rare grace. The story line involving Alice, the household servant is refreshing and incredibly sweet. A fun movie, that deals with urban Indian families with a refreshing accuracy, without glossing over social complexities. An absolute delight!
Rating:
Summary: Awesome Movie- at last on DVD
Review: This movie is awesome. Story line is funny, but not in a Jerry Seinfeld way- it's more sophisticated in nature. A superb love story between a soon-to-be-married girl, who's also scoring her ex-bf when the wedding procedure is going on, with a US returned handsome young man. They had their respect for this arranged marriage, and the groom decided he'll continue with the marriage even though he gets quite upset knowing that the bride still had relationship with her ex. When he bursts into emotions, she bursts into cry- perfect indian emotional outburst that leads the guy to let go all wrong of her soon-to-be bride. There is also a love thingie going on between the maid and the wedding planner- a very touchy poor class love story. There's also mention of a paedophile, which definitely is the reason why it was rated R, apart from some sexual situations. With traditional hindi wedding songs, and some western-minded views, this movie is definitely a milestone in indian film making. Thanks to Mira Nair, people from all over the world came to know about modern Indians once again. Recommended: Asoka (Quite like BraveHeart of India), DevDas (great emotional lovestory based on a Bengali classic novel), Salam Bombay (another movie by Mira Nair) and finally Maya Memsahib.
Rating: 
Summary: overhyped
Review: Ok, maybe im no expert in Indian cinema, and this marks some kind of crossover milestone or something, but as a film its seriously overated.
watchable in a kind of mike leigh lite style, but overall pretty unsubstantial.
theres nothing wrong with the film, and if your looking for an insight into modern indian family life amogst the wealthy and their servants then im sure youll find something here, but thers not a lot more.
Rating: 
Summary: Monsoon Wedding - Something to be forgotten about
Review: Mira Nair a self proclaimed ambassador for the cultural heritage of India has again managed to capture the western audience with her narration of the happenings ina Punjabi wedding. Kudos to her for doing this.Now a few words about the movie. A very mediocre self indulgent and essentially depressing narration of a middle class family setting in New Delhi. It is essentially pretentious in its interpretation of happenings. Mira Nair has established an aura of credibility which she is exploiting to tell the story of confused morals and misplaced values in a Punjabi family. While I agree that such issues are generally not addressed very openly, I am appalled at the latitude she offers herself in passing value judgement on a culture taht she claims as her own. The editing is bad though the docudrama feel to the movie is interesting. The characters are woven very skillfully though I thought that there was an overdose of characters. The screenplay is mediocre and the direction average. Naseeruddin Shah excels as the patriach and Lilet Dubey is good as well. Others are all just about average with the exception of Vasundhara Das. She should stick to singing. On the whole if you want to see a piece of farce I would recommend it. This movie assumes the audience to have an average IQ of 70.
Rating:
Summary: Delightful comedic reflection on modern Indian culture.
Review: Monsoon Wedding is a mature woman's reflection on the complexities and contradictions of modern Indian culture. There is an arranged marriage and a romantic marriage, an unmarried woman who is sexually active and an unmarried woman who abstains, Indians who want to be more traditional and Indians who want to be more modern. There is upper class love and working class love. As a young woman, Nair directed Mississippi Masala, a story of an Indian family that is forced to leave Uganda and move to Mississippi when Amin rises to power and persecutes the Indians. Mississippi Masala explores the contradictions of Indian society as well, but in a critical way. The desire to adopt mainstream American culture and the desire to remain traditional are both lampooned. In contrast, Mississippi Masala explored contradictions and problems in African American working class culture in a very sympathetic manner, producing one of the very few portrayals of wholesome Black family life that feels real to me.
In Monsoon wedding a more mature Nair describes promblematic aspects of Indian culture in a sympathetic manner, emphasizing the ways in which livingness and integrity allow several very different types of Indians to overcome obstacles and thrive. To me this, much more than Nair's Kama Sutra, is a tale of love. This movie is rated R. It has a little semi-nudity, some sexual situations, some use of a profane word and some discussion of childhood sexual abuse. It celebrates women's sensuality in a very modest way with none of the punishment of female sexuality so common to American films. Instead (repeating myself somewhat but, hey, I am not getting paid) it presents a variety of choices, including constraint, and some of their consequences. If your teenager has seen any R rated films, or some sophistication about sex, this is a good film to see. The photography is beautiful, the music wonderful, and the multiple plots interesting and compelling. I saw Monsoon Wedding twice, then spent two weeks persuading my teenage daughter, who loves her father but has little time for him, to come see it with me. She loved it too. This is a lovely film. See it. Enjoy yourself and experience the ways in which another culture confronts problems common to human existence in all cultures.
Rating:
Summary: Delightful comedic reflection on modern Indian culture.
Review: Presuming you have read other reviews, Monsoon Wedding is a mature woman's reflection on the complexities and contradictions of modern Indian culture. There is an arranged marriage and a romantic marriage, an unmarried woman who is sexually active and an unmarried woman who abstains, Indians who want to be more traditional and Indians who want to be more modern. There is upper class love and working class love. As a young woman, Nair directed Mississippi Masala, a story of an Indian family that is forced to leave Uganda and move to Mississippi when Amin rises to power and persecutes the Indians. Mississippi Masala explores the contradictions of Indian society as well, but in a critical way. The desire to adopt mainstream American culture and the desire to remain traditional are both lampooned. In contrast, Mississippi Masala explored contradictions and problems in African American working class culture in a very sympathetic manner, producing one of the very few portrayals of wholesome Black family life that feels real to me.
In Monsoon wedding a more mature Nair describes promblematic aspects of Indian culture in a sympathetic manner, emphasizing the ways in which livingness and integrity allow several very different types of Indians to overcome obstacles and thrive. To me this, much more than Nair's Kama Sutra, is a tale of love. I don't have the rating in front of me, but to me this is a PG-13 movie. It has a little semi-nudity and some sexual situations. It celebrates women's sensuality in a very modest way with none of the punishment of female sexuality so common to American films. Instead (repeating myself somewhat but, hey, I am not getting paid) it presents a variety of choices, including constraint, and some of their consequences. The contrast between Monsoon Wedding and Mississippi Masala is heightened by the fact that several actors appear in both movies, including the father and the wedding planner. The photography is beautiful, the music wonderful, and the multiple plots interesting and compelling. I saw Monsoon Wedding twice, then spent two weeks persuading my teenage daughter, who loves her father but has little time for him, to come see it with me. She loved it too. This is a lovely film,
Rating:
Summary: A jewel of a movie that was sadly overlooked by the masses.
Review: I loved every minute of this movie, which I saw in the theater and definitely will buy for DVD. It's a fun movie about a large family -- some members of whom are dysfunctional -- coming together for an arranged wedding in which the couple has never met. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they do fall in love over the course of the movie, but that's all I'll give away. What made this movie so much fun was the relationship between all the family members. I'm an Anglo married into a large Mexican-American family, and this movie reminded me so much of the family get-togethers when all 31 of us get together at Thanksgiving or Christmas or some other celebration. Down here along the U.S./Mexico border, many folks speak a blend of Spanish and English called "Spanglish." Well, in Monsoon Wedding the blend of English and Hindi (?) reminded me so much of Spanglish. Two vastly differences intermingle and, even though the movie is subtitled, you wouldn't need the subtitles to follow the story. The cinematography is gorgeous, with vivid colors making the screen a palette of beauty. Sadly, this movie didn't get much of an audience in the theaters. I went alone one day when things were slow at work and there were two other people in the theater with me. Hopefully its release on DVD will spread its popularity. This is easily one of the best all-around movies I have seen in a long, long time.
Rating:
Summary: Mira Nair's films are always wonderfully done
Review: I had only seen one previous film by Mira Nair, "Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love" and it was so beautiful. The colors, the music, the dancing...in a single word...breathtaking! So I took a chance on Monsoon Wedding and....she does it again. The music is so good in this film I was dancing in my chair in the theatre. And there is this one scene...when the family is all dressed in beautiful gowns and there all out in the rain...dancing...it was just so beautiful. The cinematography was just...the music was just...the acting was just....the STORY ITSELF was just beautiful. I recommend this film to anyone who loves to laugh and who loves a great story! This is the best film I've seen in a very very long time.
Rating:
Summary: Stunning, visually and emotionally
Review: One of the things that struck me about "Monsoon Wedding" was the colors of the film. There are electric colors everywhere: the orange of the marigold flowers, the exotic saris the women wear, the green of the foliage, the beautiful wedding tent. All these colors assault the viewer's eye in the most pleasurable of ways.
Another excellent part of the film was the way Mira Nair explored relationships, both familial relationships [cousins, father to son] and male-female relationships [the married couples]. I thought the different relationships among the male-female couples was especially interesting. The actors did a very good job, making me believe that I was watching a documentary of a family, not a movie about a "staged" family.
I also enjoyed the mix of Punjab and English spoken in the film. It made the movie that much more realistic, as the characters switched effortlessly between the two languages in conversation.
This movie seems to only reinforce my theory that foreign films are way better than American movies. I strongly and highly recommend this movie to everyone. You will enjoy it whole-heartedly!!
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